Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Buildkite vs Harness comparison

Buildkite and Harness are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Buildkite is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.2, while Harness is ranked #10 with an average rating of 7.7. Additionally, 92% of Buildkite users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Harness users who would recommend it.
Buildkite
Read 14 Buildkite reviews
  • 254 Views
  • 99 Comparison Views
92% willing to recommend
Harness
Read 4 Harness reviews
  • 2,131 Views
  • 1,455 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report
Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Harness and Buildkite are competing products in continuous integration and delivery. Data comparisons suggest Buildkite holds a slight edge in flexibility and scalability, while Harness is favored for its intuitive automation capabilities.

Features: Harness is known for automated deployment pipelines, centralized logging, and support for complex workflows. Buildkite offers customizable pipelines, superior control over build environments, and flexibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Harness provides a cloud-based deployment model, simplifying setup with proactive customer support. Buildkite uses a hybrid model, allowing infrastructure control but requiring more technical setup. Its service emphasizes responsiveness, though it might need more technical assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Harness offers a flexible pricing model focused on cost-effective automation, leading to a favorable ROI by reducing time and resources in manual processes. Buildkite's competitive pricing is favored by larger enterprises who prioritize control and customization, with potential for higher initial costs offset by tailored deployments.

DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE REPORT
To learn more, read our detailed Buildkite vs. Harness Report (Updated: April 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Buildkite vs. Harness
April 2025
Download the complete report
Helped 850,028 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Buildkite
Ranking in Build Automation
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Harness
Ranking in Build Automation
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (31st), Cloud Cost Management (15th)
 

Featured Reviews

Prabin Silwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Has an easy setup phase while also offering good documentation
The problem we are facing sometimes is that we have lots of unit testers, and we have to wait about ten minutes to complete all of those because we want to run or find a way. It's not directly due to the limitation of the tool as well, but when we are running the spec, we want to run those parallelly and decrease the downtime so that our deployment can be faster. I think that one is not possible only due to the it also depends upon the unit test framework as well we are using. When we tried with the multiple test cases in a parallel manner, there were some dependencies, and one over another kept failing. We make those sequential calls. The aforementioned area consists of the issues my company faced while using Buildkite.
Read full review
Linwei Yuan - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline microservices deployment with integrated execution pipelines and comprehensive monitoring
Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place. It is very convenient since we have many microservices, so having one platform for all of them is beneficial. The dashboard allows me to monitor all core services' deployment status in one place, making it easier to find bugs and check logs.
Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"What I like best about Buildkite is its workflow management. You define YAML files to specify what needs to be done. The jobs can run based on a schedule, like a cron job, where you set it to run every night or every week. Additionally, you can set up triggers, such as new pushes to a repository."
"They have great plugins, scalability, UI, and pipeline options. They also offer webhooks that allow integration with custom setups to send events dynamically."
"The tool's flexibility with pipelines gave us a lot of advantages, especially when managing a huge amount of microservices."
"The documentation is quite helpful."
"Buildkite allows us to build automations and integration tasks effectively."
"Buildkite's UI is particularly intuitive, making it simple to add steps to your pipeline. It also provides detailed logging."
"It is a stable solution."
"The tool is simple and has no learning curve. If you know YAML, you can master it. It is simple to learn."
More Buildkite pros
"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place."
"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place, making it convenient."
"The features of Harness are valuable, supporting rolling deployments, basic deployments, and blue-green deployments with zero downtime."
"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."
"It's a highly customizable DevOps tool."
 

Cons

"The way Buildkite represents workflows can be challenging. It uses Directed Acyclic Graphs, and there's a trade-off between abstraction and understanding what goes wrong when something fails. When a layer of jobs breaks down, it can be difficult to identify the issue at first glance. Additionally, logging can be cumbersome. I prefer GitHub Workflows."
"Based on the load, the agents can be scaled up and scaled down, and while they are scaling up, sometimes they just get stuck."
"The solution should offer more options for installing an agent and give users the option of having a separate self-hosted or provisioned agent."
"BuildKite should follow some providers like GitHub Actions. They can offer a shared agent or cloud agent."
"I would like to see some improvements in the hooks implementation."
"There is a need for rework occasionally, and issues like syntax errors can occur multiple times, especially when manual changes are made in AWS or Amazon Connect that are not captured in the code."
"Since we were using Buildkite for the first time, we had a lot of difficulty understanding how it worked. We didn't find any documentation from third parties; only Buildkite provided documentation. As a result, we faced a steep learning curve. After some time, it became much easier to use. Initially, understanding certain features, like the R integration, was challenging."
"Most of our projects involve both front-end and back-end development. We write the code and then create a file to set up our process, including specifying the tests we want to run. Before deploying to production, we need to install and configure certain things. We need something like Docker Pro, but I'm unsure about that. I'm familiar with the steps for using Buildkite for this process. We start by defining which tests to run."
More Buildkite cons
"When deploying multiple components to multiple environments, like production and BCP, failures sometimes occur. Improvements are needed when deploying one component to one environment."
"There's also room for improvement in debugging pipeline issues, which can sometimes become complex."
"I prefer the previous less compact UI version of Harness, which showed more details on the screen."
"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."
"When integrating Harness with more than twenty applications in one place, it becomes less stable, causing improvements to be necessary."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We used the solution’s free version."
"For a business plan, it was 19 USD per month per user."
"The solution's per-user pricing model suits huge enterprises but is expensive for small to medium businesses."
"The self-hosted option is pretty cheap."
"I find Buildkite cost-effective as it has definitely increased my productivity, especially on the deployment side. It saved a lot of my time and improved data management because I can handle different environments myself now."
"I don't think the tool is expensive."
"Buildkite is known to be cheaper than GitHub Workflows, which is considered a standard in the industry. It can be cost-effective, especially for organizations that heavily utilize Docker and containerization, because every code change triggers a new build. Its integration with AWS, particularly with ECR, and its caching capabilities with layers are powerful features."
Information not available
report
See which vendors are best for you
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Build Automation solutions are best for your needs.
See recommendations
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
34%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Buildkite?
One area that needs improvement in Buildkite is the requirement for rework of the code. There can be syntax errors when running the Buildkite pipeline, especially if someone has made manual changes...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for Buildkite?
I use Buildkite for deployment tasks related to building AMI images and deploying routing profile queues into Amazon Connect. This involves using Buildkite in conjunction with GitHub. We create fil...
See all answers
What advice do you have for others considering Buildkite?
With two years of experience on Buildkite, I would recommend it to others due to its manageable pipeline and the support team available for big issues. I am satisfied with it, rating its stability ...
See all answers
What do you like most about Harness?
It's a highly customizable DevOps tool.
See all answers
What needs improvement with Harness?
Previously, when deploying a version that had been deployed successfully before, it sometimes failed upon trying again, which seems to be an intermittent issue about stability. I prefer the previou...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for Harness?
I used Harness for CICD, and it served as the release platform that our team used for Java applications. We do Java microservices, and we used it to deploy them.
See all answers
 

Comparisons

GitHub Actions vs Buildkite Logo
GitHub Actions vs Buildkite
Compared 55% of the time
Tekton vs Buildkite Logo
Tekton vs Buildkite
Compared 23% of the time
Nx vs Buildkite Logo
Nx vs Buildkite
Compared 21% of the time
More Buildkite Competitors
Jenkins vs Harness Logo
Jenkins vs Harness
Compared 20% of the time
GitHub Actions vs Harness Logo
GitHub Actions vs Harness
Compared 18% of the time
TeamCity vs Harness Logo
TeamCity vs Harness
Compared 14% of the time
Tekton vs Harness Logo
Tekton vs Harness
Compared 12% of the time
GitLab vs Harness Logo
GitLab vs Harness
Compared 8% of the time
More Harness Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Buildkite
April 2025
Buildkite reportDownload Buildkite product report
Buyer's Guide
Build Automation
April 2025
Harness reportDownload Harness product report
 

Also Known As

No data available
Armory
 

Overview

Buildkite is a powerful CI/CD tool praised for its scalability and flexibility in automating and managing complex workflows across multiple platforms. Its integration capabilities with various systems and supports for secure, customizable environments enhance development efficiency and data privacy. The feedback highlights significant boosts in productivity and operational cost reduction, making Buildkite a strategic asset for businesses aiming to streamline development tasks and align with organizational goals.

Buildkite

Harness offers a comprehensive toolset for automating deployment processes and enhancing software update efficiency. It's lauded for its CI/CD capabilities, feature flagging, and real-time deployment monitoring. Key features include an intuitive UI, secret management, and robust rollback functionalities, all contributing to improved productivity and reduced errors in DevOps environments.

Harness
 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced
Buyer's Guide
Buildkite vs. Harness
April 2025
Free Report: Buildkite vs. Harness
Find out what your peers are saying about Buildkite vs. Harness and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
DOWNLOAD NOW
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
See our Buildkite vs. Harness report.
See our list of best Build Automation vendors.

We monitor all Build Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.